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Lamp, broken circa 1988

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Posts posted by Lamp, broken circa 1988

  1. Funny you bring up the "hip hop" thing- I think this is their first album where there's no way to defend it as being such. It's like someone describing The Fall to a dystopic science fiction writer.

  2. blah blah blah streams blah blah weak part of the year blah NEW DEATH GRIPS ALBUM

     

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    "Government Plates" by Death Grips

    1. You might think he loves you for your money but I know what he really loves you for it's your brand new leopard skin pillbox hat

    2. Anne Bonny

    3. Two Heavens

    4. This is Violence Now (Dont get me wrong)

    5. Birds

    6. Feels like a wheel

    7. Im Overflow

    8. Big House

    9. Government Plates

    10. Bootleg (Dont need your help)

    11. Whatever I want (Fuck who's watching)

    • Like 1
  3. Again, a thin week on streams. Fortunately, the one I feel I can push out here is the 10th Anniversary Deluxe reissue of an overlooked modern classic.

     

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    "Magnolia Electric Co." by Songs: Ohia

    1. Farewell Transmission 

    2. I’ve Been Riding With The Ghost 

    3. Just Be Simple 

    4. Almost Was Good Enough 

    5. The Old Black Hen 

    6. Peoria Lunch Box Blues 

    7. John Henry Split My Heart 

    8. Hold On Magnolia 

    (everything after this is a bonus track or a demo)

    9. The Big Game Is Every Night

    10. Whip Poor Will

    11. Farewell Transmission

    12. I’ve Been Riding With The Ghost

    13. Just Be Simple

    14. The Old Black Hen

    15. Peoria Lunch Box Blues

    16. John Henry Split My Heart

    17. Hold On Magnolia

    18. The Big Game Is Every Night

    19. Whip Poor Will

  4. No one's going to like what I have to say about Reflektor, so here's some streams!
     
    Well, okay, it's kind of a light week, but the two I have here are pretty dang excellent.
     
    Excellently crafted hook-laden rock, now with extra fuzz pedals!

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    "Surfing Strange" by Swearin'

    1. Dust in the Gold Sack 

    2. Watered Down 

    3. Mermaid 

    4. Parts of Speech 

    5. Melanoma 

    6. Echo Locate 

    7. Loretta's Flowers 

    8. Glare of the Sun 

    9. Unwanted Place 

    10. Young 

    11. Curdled

     

    A bandcamp hosted tease of a record that is currently heavy in my rotation. Super sparse, atmospheric guitar muisc.

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    "Overdue" by Circuit Des Yeux (SIDE A ONLY)

    1. Lithonia

    2. Hegira

    3. Nova 88

    4. Acarina

  5. BATTLEFIELD 4 (PC)- I got a real itch to get in some heavy multiplayer shooting, and that used to mean Bad Company 2 a few years ago. Well, now only insane people play that, and I had extra dosh around so I went in on this. Really enjoying it so far! Getting most of my time in on a support, and spending most of that time getting murdered while I learn maps, but that's how that's supposed to be going right now.

     

    DARK SOULS (also PC)- Trying a Sorcerer. It's an odd combination of really easy and really fucking hard- basically if I have a clear line of sight I can nuke the fuck out of whatever stands in my way, but gosh help me if there's a corner I need to round to get at someone. Also got trolled by an invader for the first time! Neat!

     

    REUS- God game, not totally sold on it yet. The game layout and the art design are really neat, but there just doesn't feel like there's enough that can be done. Quite a problem seeing as you are the will behind four giant god monsters. I don't know that I'll stick with this one.

  6. There's no steam deal thread anymore, so, I'll just put this here: Gone Home is $10 for what I assume is today only, as part of their Midweek Madness thing. There's no demo since it's at most three hours. It's a first person adventure game that takes the strength of Bioshock's style of storytelling* (the narration happening while you're in the game looking around) and makes it so both the game and the story benefit from that delivery. If you're looking for a break from the Ten Hour Action Movie thing, this is a pretty excellent option.

     

    *it comes from a part the team responsible for the Bioshock 2 Minerva's Den DLC, which has the reputation of being better than the main game.

  7. Alright so I decided it'd be worthwhile to take a day and pick through the new streaming things to find things I could pimp instead of just going "MY SOURCES LET ME DOWN SO NOTHING IS GOOD." Especially since that DJ Rashad record "Double Cup" was out last week and that thing's dominated my stereo since. SO! Here's some streams!

     

    The PR line on this one talks about "the intersection between rhythmic and ambient music." I just think it's damn good electronic music.

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    "Chance of Rain" by Laurel Halo

    1. Dr Echt

    2. Oneiroi

    3. Serendip

    4. Chance Of Rain

    5. Melt

    6. Still/Dromos

    7. Thrax

    8. Ainnome

    9. -Out

    Here's one I'm admittedly still working on figuring out, but so far I like it. Dark Detroit Rap. Like, "Dark for Detroit Rap" Dark. Also, this one's a bandcamp page so you've probably got more than a week to get to it.
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    "No Poison No Paradise" by Black Milk

    1. Interpret Sabotage (feat. Mel)

    2. Deion's House

    3. Codes and Cab Fare (feat. Black Thought)

    4. Ghetto DEMF (feat. Quelle Chris)

    5. Sonny Jr. (Dreams) [feat. Robert Glasper & Dwele]

    6. Sunday's Best

    7. Monday's Worst

    8. Perfected On Puritan Ave.

    9. Dismal

    10. Parallels (feat. Ab)

    11. X Chords

    12. Black Sabbath (feat. Tone Trezure)

    13. Money Bags (Paradise)

     

    This is maybe the most NPR album stream possible: A "Best Of" compliation by an overlooked and mysterious Nigerian funk pianist, put out by David Byrne's Luaka Bop record label. 

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    "Who Is William Onyeabor?" by William Onyeabor

    1. Body And Soul

    2. Atomic Bomb

    3. Good Name

    4. Something You Will Never Forget

    5. Why Go To War

    6. Love Is Blind

    7. Heaven And Hell

    8. Let's Fall In Love

    9. Fantastic Man

    10. The Way To Win Your Love

    11. Love Me Now

    12. Jungle Gods

    13. When The Going Is Smooth And Good

  8. AUDIOSURF 2- Early access, so I wont say a lot. Right now, I feel that it handles the kind of music I listen to better than Audiosurf did, and I sank 30 hours into Audiosurf so that's a good sign.EXPERIMENT 12- Certainly an experiment. Started by Terry Cavanagh (VVVVVV, Super Hexagon), Experiment 12 is an attempt at making a chain game, as in a game that is developed by a succession of people. Each game takes an element from the end of the other and builds into a story that takes off on its own bizarre path. It doesn't always work out well, like an experiment, but the idea alone was wild enough for me to find it worth checking out.

     

    VOLGARR THE VIKING- This game is going to kill me. My favorite kind of platformer is where there's deliberate pacing and a possible "perfect" run with limited variables, and Volgarr The Viking is a game that punishes you for not knowing/using that path. It's a great way to test your ability to learn pattern recognition. Also a great way to break your controller.

     

    THE STANLEY PARABLE- When I start to play a game, I spend time pushing against games while I play them, trying to see where it breaks. The Stanley Parable is a game where every time I've pushed against it, the game has directly pushed back. It stresses me out a lot, even though the story is light and comedic. At its best though it's a strong critique of the Ten Hour Movie game development trends which is something that needs to exist right about now. 

  9. That's the truest, ugliest part of game development (and software development): It takes a lot of work to ship even a shitty product.

     

    At the same time, given Ubisoft's history, the idea that a game of theirs would've been too fresh out of the oven to put out is amazing. Oh how I wish I could play the current build for twenty minutes.

  10. It's a good thing all the streams this week are albums I cant vet, because there's something way more important to address

     

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    That right there is a cover to "Not Here/ Not Now" by SWANS.

     

    If you want to pre-order the new live CD/fund the upcoming album, you'd better move fast. Note the /2000 in the upper right there.

  11. TELEGLITCH- top down minimalist survival horror. Manages to create a disturbing mood with very, very little. I've actually found it to be too stressful to play at length, so, I'll probably beat it in like three years. Really clever game, worth checking out if you like Quake-era texture work and anxiety.

     

    these two are not new games, just shit I finally got around to

     

    RENEGADE OPS- Skip the ending. The actual video game is pretty good, especially if you have multiple people. Make it a score/difficulty passtime thing. Totally skip the ending.

     

    FTL- Airtight design right up until the final boss which changes the rules of the whole game dramatically. That's not great, but everything up until that is awesome.

  12. buhhhhhh.I'll address the person I was actually directing that at and then put the other thing in spoiler tags.

    First, I guess "go punctuationless" is not enough of a "I am facetiously incredulous" sign. I just found that sequence of events funny, of saying this one exact thing and then having it totally dropped. No malice in that, nothing other than a slight ribbing. Sorry if it came off as anything but. 

    I definitely understand the "pop artist as cultural aggregation" angle, and that's a totally fair counterpoint.  I spend all my time at the other end of that exchange so it gets hard to see the larger payoff sometimes over the initial "well this is obviously this song, this scene beat him to this" sort of reaction. And I think your point about how Kanye is often strategically off point is something I missed. I had this 808s and Heartbreaks comparison lined up, of "this is him pushing things forwards" because the top of the music industry is dominated by guys with that sound right now. It's too early to see if Yeezus has any effect like that. I guess the more interesting point is that it seems like MBDTF didn't have that particular ripple effect. No accounting for that, although it could have something to do with how much of a character study it is versus a thing like 808s. Just a theory, though.

     

     

    Okay. Hi caley.

    1. It's ridiculous because there is a world outside the mainstream. There are hosts of other people reaching the conclusion he hit on this record. I used more obscure examples because if you went and did rudimentary research it would've been obvious, but since you're looking at a broader picture without doing due dilligence, here's a broader example: Skrillex. In the last few years he broke HUGE on fusing noise with club sounds. But since he's newer, and since he's pushing against the grain, he doesn't have any respect. Kanye has more cache. So at best, Kanye West assumes the role a teacher grading other people's papers, and at worst he's cosplaying Alexander Graham Bell. 

     

    2. The issue here is detailed quite wonderfully in the phrase you chose to use. You are fixated on the spectacle and not the reality. See, a tree doesn't just go up and over. Things happen to the tree's roots, the weather around it, the earth underneath it, et cetera. All of this leads to the tree falling, but it's irresponsible to reduce this event to simply "This tree fell." It's certainly very modern to just reduce it to something memetic and clear, but the world simply is not this way. It's downright mean to discredit the people who have produced the inertia and circumstances that allowed Yeezus to happen.

     

    2a. It is totally unfeasible that Drake changed large parts of his record's style in three months because Kanye West put out an ugly skronking thing in June. He started making Nothing Was The Same in 2012. 

     

    3. Man, no. That's not music, that's industry. There's too much history outside of the existence of "music as mass produced commodity" to even entertain that's "been going on forever." It is a prominent feature of the situation we're alive in, sure, but it's not the whole of it.

     

    4, I didn't call for a record of all anti-establishment lyrics. Many albums misrepresent themselves in the run-up to their release, and I was let down to see Kanye fell into the same trap. Also, yes, I agree you could argue those things. Nor is sex bad. The problem is how he invokes sex, as though his desire completely overrides the idea of other consciousnesses existing in an equal measure. "One more fuck and I could own you." Like, I know other lines get thrown around to say the lyricism is bad, and some of them are pretty solid examples, but that line right there is the overriding point of the whole fucking record. It is impossible to consider 

     

    5. Those are all opinions too.

     

    6. Oh, and then you disrespect me. Neat. I'm self taught musician, learning how to engineer and record. I've written, produced, and released three albums, all of which I have shown on here. But, I'm criticizing a piece of art you like (which is different than criticizing you). So instead of asking "what do you mean," which I clearly would've been glad to explain, you insult me. Alright.

     

    Addendum: I'm going to make sure to have a beer tonight for going through three posts about this without invoking the obvious "YEEZUS RIPS _____ OFF" counterpoint that stained the discussion back in June. You will have to fill in the blank, because otherwise I don't get to have the beer.

  13. "Yeezus is derivative of all these other artists"

    one day passes

    "Yeezus doesnt sound like any other rap album"

    should i have like included citations or animated gifs or something because what

     

    Although you are totally on point with the Kimmel stuff.

  14. I'm split on the production on Yeezus. I think the idea that it's pushing anything forwards is ridiculous, but many of the co-producers (specifically Arca, HudMo/TNGHT, and Gesaffelstein) are artists i respect who are doing what people say Yeezus has done. So is the scene Kanye says to be pulling from, of Chicago house and Juke. So is the new wave of these noise rap acts, like B L A C K I E (who actually got word back from an engineer that kanye was playing his music for inspiration) who's been about this sound since 2008. I'm not sure if he's just trying to compliment all this stuff and it just fails to interface with what he's trying to do lyrically, like it's coming too far to try and establish the same mood. The sound is like the embodiment of the idea of the elite co-opting the culture of the poor, and it just creeps me out.

     

    Other minor issues:

    -it's kind of frustrating that he debuted the record with these two anti-establishment songs and then the rest of the record is about his sex game actively dehumanizing people. -All the guest spots either end up sabotaged (Frank Ocean) or are just generally godawful (Keef, Assassin, Vernon). Exception granted to Charlie Wilson, and I am kind of eager to hear a Kanye-produced Wilson record which they've been talking about

    -And it's not like his production ear's totally gone: Kanye's responsible for a lot of the better beats on Pusha T's record, which I love the hell out of. Yeezus just seems to be made in very ugly, isolated mindset.

    -I cannot help but wonder if this is what we all earned for praising My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, which I've found to not be aging particularly well (mainly because as I learn more about how to engineer recordings, MBDTF sounds tackier and tackier)

  15. I disagree with 2013 being weaker than 2012 but of course I would disagree. I'd attribute this to getting more out of rap this year than last year and understanding that the big name big event releases are now more than ever not for me, which in turn lets me move faster on smaller name artists and labels and bounce between new sounds and ideas at a nearly constant rate. My "to listen to" queue only became empty just recently, for maybe half a week, and since then I've finished five more records and have four waiting for me.

  16. I AM LATE WITH THE MONDAY STREAMS FOR A GOOD REASON. This was going to be a one album week, then suddenly one of my favorite musicians up and released his new record. Be enthralled!

     

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    "Future Proof" by Mesita

    1. No Future 

    2. Firesign

    3. Forward

    4. XYXY

    5. Hostages

    6. Damage

    7. Creature

    8. Vigilant

    9. Distance

    10. Nothing

     

    Elsewhere, there is more manic ambient brilliance.

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    "Virgins" by Tim Hecker

    1. Prism

    2. Virginal I

    3. Radiance

    4. Live Room

    5. Live Room Out

    6. Virginal II

    7. Black Refraction

    8. Incense at Abu Ghraib

    9. Amps, Drugs, Harmonium

    10. Stigmata I 

    11. Stigmata II

    12. Stab Variation

     

     

    EDIT: By the way, in case you missed your chance to listen to "Carey's Cold Spring" by Frog Eyes, you can hear it in full and buy it here.

     

    EDIT THE 2ND: OH HOLY SHIT, I had no idea a Bandcamp for this even existed. Chinese Fugazi Worship GO GO GO

     

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    "1984" by PK14

    1. You and Me

    2. Ice Age

    3. May

    4. Flowers In Hand, A Crazed Woman

    5. Egyptian Rain

    6. Song About Forgetting

    7. One-Man-War

    8. Future Mystery

    9. Voyagers

    10. 1984 part Ⅰ

    11. 1984 part Ⅱ

    • Like 1
  17. Oh my gosh, THREE albums worth streaming this monday. One rock, one electronic, and one rap.

     

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    "Carey's Cold Spring" by Frog Eyes

    1. The Road is Long

    2. The Country Child

    3. Your Holiday Treat

    4. Don't Give Up Your Dreams

    5. Needle in the Sun

    6. Noni's Got a Taste For the Bright Red Air Jordans

    7. A Duration of Starts and Lines That Form Code

    8. Seven Daughters

    9. Claxxon's Lament

     

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    "Psychic" by Darkside

    1. Golden Arrow

    2. Sitra

    3. Heart

    4. Paper Trails

    5. The Only Shrine I've Seen

    6. Freak, Go Home

    7. Greek Light

    8. Metatron

     

    THIS ONE REQUIRES A SPOTIFY ACCOUNT

     

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    "Old" by Danny Brown

    1. Side A (Old)

    2. The Return [ft. Freddie Gibbs]

    3. 25 Bucks [ft. Purity Ring]

    4. Wonderbread

    5. Gremlins

    6. Dope Fiend Rental [ft. Schoolboy Q]

    7. Torture

    8. Lonely

    9. Clean Up

    10. Red 2 Go

    11. Side B (Dope Song)

    12. Dubstep [ft. Scrufizzer]

    13. Dip

    14. Smokin & Drinkin

    15. Break It (Go)

    16. Handstand

    17. Way Up Here [ft. Ab-Soul]

    18. Kush Coma [ft. A$AP Rocky and Zelooperz] 

    19. Float On [ft. Charli XCX]

  18. GTA5 Update: Just finished the torture bit. I'm sure that's been beaten to death in the GTA thread so I'll summarize with two words: "Not Cool." Taking a break from it for a while.

     

    PAC-MAN CHAMPIONSHIP EDITION DX+ - it's on steam now. you should get it. it is like infinite sparklers with house music.

     

    SHADOW WARRIOR: Conflicted. It's a total throwback FPS, right on down to multiple secrets, being scored at the end of every level, and slowly introducing weapons. I'm mostly enjoying it, but it will do three awesome things and then one really shitty thing, and so I don't have a great read on what I feel about it right now. This is the example I've been using with my friends.

    -Finish first major boss fight, which leads to actual character development.

    -Next world immediately introduces pretty major changes to how some enemies work.

    -Game quickly introduces a new weapon which offers a new solution to the new problem they've just posed. Weapon is satisfying, upgrade options are funny.

    -Next story point involves running into twin assassins with tight shiny body suits w/ chest windows who constantly coo at each other. When my character introduces himself, one says "he's not quite a genie but I'd still rub his lamp."

     

    So yeah. I like playing it and I wish that they left all the gross out of their throwback formula. Wait for a sale.

  19. I only have one theater story and it is for Borat, which is the best time I've ever had at a theater. Every time something happened in that movie, there would be this awkward silence followed by someone going "heh!" making it okay for everyone to laugh. One exception: when Borat is despondent over losing everything and he angrily throws the suitcase w/ his chicken on the ground. It was so cathartic to just be able to laugh without fear of judgment that a few people started applauding.

    • Like 1
  20. The thing about Sleeping Dogs that I'm specifically drawing from is how the story starts, where there's this growing tension until the moment that everything escalates into guns, after which everything goes absolutely fucking crazy. Contrast that with GTA, which is "Dramatic intro! Flash forward! Normal life... grind a little bit... little bit more... DOZENS DEAD. Okay now go play with this dog." For $226million in production, I don't feel it's weird to be expecting more than that.

    • Like 1
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